The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum has teamed up with Google on an architecture contest celebrating both the museum's 50th anniversary and the search giant's latest 3D-modeling tool.
The two iconic organizations are asking the public to submit plans for a 100-square-foot shelter using Google Sketchup, choosing a location for the shelter via Google Earth, and using Google 3D Warehouse to upload the design and submit to the official Guggenheim contest Web site.
Once a design is submitted, it will be showcased on the Guggenheim's "Design It: Shelter Competition" contest Web site using a Google Earth plug-in for all the public to view.
The submissions period began Monday and will run through August 23.
Students of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture who will narrow the submissions down to 10 finalists. Once the finalists are announced, the public will be able to vote between October 10 and 21 on a favorite design.
The winner of that popular vote will be awarded the "People's Prize," while a winner chosen by a panel of experts that includes Victor Sidy, Dean of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, and David van der Leer, assistant curator of architecture and design at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum will be awarded the "Juried Prize."
Besides providing an opportunity to remind people of the Guggenheim's roots, the contest also presents a chance for Google to show what can be done with Google Sketchup, its 3D-modeling tool.
The winners, whose prize includes a VIP trip for two to New York, will be announced on October 21--the 50th anniversary of the Guggenheim Museum, which was, of course, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright himself.
The Juried Prize winner will also receive a $1,000 cash award. But that seems to be as far as the winner will be rewarded. While the contest rules allow submissions to include photos of a built shelter, in addition to the Sketchup piece, it makes no mention of building or giving resources for the winners to make their model a reality.
More scientists and engineers are about to join the international race to the moon sponsored by Google and the X Prize Foundation.
The foundation announced Thursday it will introduce two new Google Lunar X Prize teams to its already weighty roster of 14 competitors. The announcement will be made Tuesday via a teleconference from Google headquarters. Although the X Prize Foundation organizes a number of innovation competitions, the Google Lunar X Prize is sponsored in conjunction with Google.
Team LunaTrex will also have an announcement to make at that time, according to the foundation.
Then on Wednesday, Google and the X Prize Foundation plan to reveal the "true identities" of the "Mystery Team," whose members have been blogging about their competition experience. The team members will appear in person from an event at the NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif.
"The countdown has begun and soon the nameless faces of the Mystery Team members will be unveiled. But I must admit, it's been fun attending events such as Airventure and the AGI conference 'incognito.' I think I speak for all the Mystery Team members when I say, we are ready for what's next!" founding Mystery Team member who goes by the screen name MikeJ said on the Lunar X Prize blog.
The Google Lunar X Prize was officially announced at Wired's Nextfest in September 2007 and began to welcome teams in December of that year. It's a race to design, build, and send a robotic spacecraft "safely" to the moon, have it drive around on the surface of the moon for a minimum of 500 meters, and have the communications capability to send data, images, and video of its mission back to Earth.
The first team to land on the moon and complete several tasks put forth by the Lunar X Prize rules by December 31, 2012, will win $20 million.
Just to make it a little more exciting: if no one makes it by that date, the grand prize drops to $15 million.
The second team to reach the moon and complete the objectives will win $5 million. There will also be a total of $5 million in "bonuses," though it's unclear how Google will decide to distribute that money among the remaining competitors.
In order to qualify, competing teams must get 90 percent of their funding to compete from private sources.
Any ideas on who MikeJ and his or her teammates might be? According to the official team roster, the Mystery Team includes "experienced aerospace engineers, research scientists, mathematicians, physicists, university students and a former USAF pilot" all based across the U.S.
I'll take a guess. What about New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg? He has the private funds, has been a supporter of the X Prize Foundation, and the inventor-turned-businessman-turned-politician is a techie at heart. He holds a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering from Johns Hopkins University.
- prev
- 1
- next
